Ground Pounder
by Leven Kemal
Summary: Zoe lets Mal know what it means to live in the Black.


Canon stuff, et cetera: In watching _War Stories_, I noticed that Mal didn't know what Zoe and Wash had vowed to one another. Which suggests to me, that he wasn't there for the actual marriage ceremony. For those non-native English speakers, to "talk through one's hat" means to speak authoritatively about something one actually knows very little about. And, we learned that Zoe grew up on a ship in _Hearts of Gold_.

"Sir," Zoe told Mal's back as she dogged him down the corridor from the bridge into the galley, "if you owned a hat, I'd say you're talkin' through it."

"Zoe, I really don't wanna talk about this. Already said my piece-"

"What you said was 'Shipboard romances complicate things, so quit, both of you. Captain's orders.'"

Mal stopped, wheeling around on his first mate. "Yeah. That's what I said."

His quick pivot had her reining up right close into his face. She stood there, eyeball to eyeball, so he could even feel the heat of her body radiatin' 'gainst the front of his. And it was him that stepped back a pace to put a bit of breathin' room 'tween them.

"That ain't a piece, Mal," she informed him, voice level. "That's an order. And while I'm usually right there with you when orders need to be ordered, we ain't there. This ain't the battlefield nor even a job. This is me an' Wash. Nothin' else." Her eyes narrowed. "And I repeat, if you had a hat, you'd be talkin' through it."

Mal sighed, heavily and dramatically. "All right, Zoe. Set me to rights. Fill me in as to how I'm so very, very wrong."

She looked at him a moment, then she cocked her head, her brow furrowing. "Mal, you do recall I grew up shipside."

Well, okay, this was kinda a ninety degree turn, but yeah, he did recollect that, in a kinda abstract way. She'd never talked about it much. Probably 'cuz of what the Alliance had done to that ship. To her family. Just like he didn't talk about Shadow. He nodded.

"So. You ever think 'bout how I came to be born and raised on a ship?"

"Well, to be perfectly truthsome, Zoe," he said glibly, "I can't say I've ever pondered over much on how that happy event occurred."

A cheerful voice chimed in from the crew lounge. "Well, ya see, Cap'n, when a man an' a woman love each other very much-"

Mal glanced over his shoulder at his mechanic, curled up on the couch with a little electronic doohicky she was tinkering with. "Kaywinnit Lee Frye, don't make me come over there and spank you." He swung back on Zoe, glaring. "An' how come we're havin' this conversation in the galley in front of the whole crew?"

"We **were** havin' it on the bridge, sir, but you ran, so-"

"I didn't run!" he protested. She slanted a skeptical brow, so he explained, "It was... it was a strategic retreat."

"An' 'sides, Cap'n," Kaylee chipped in, "Jayne ain't here, just me, so it ain't the whole crew. An' Wash is still on the bridge."

"But I'm with you in spirit," Wash commented over the galley comm. "I could link Jayne in, too. He's in the cargo-"

"No!" Mal and Zoe chorused together.

"Just tryin' to be helpful," Wash said soothingly.

Mal realized the time had come. Zoe had the bit in her teeth, and if he tried to avoid this conversation any longer, he could very well end up tied - expertly - to a chair, while she had it out with him. Sometimes a man just had to give into the inevitable gracefully.

"Okay, Zoe. Explain to me 'bout my nonexistent hat."

"You don't know anything 'bout 'shipboard romances,'" she said bluntly.

"I don't."

"No, sir. You're a ground-pounder."

"I'm a what now?"

"Ground-pounder. Y' grew up dirtside."

"Won't argue that fact." Just didn't know that that accident of birth came with a not-so-polite soundin' term attached to it.

"So, folk who spend most of their time dirtside don't know how to live on a ship proper."

"Uh, Zoe, y' may have failed to notice, but it's been a while since I've spent a lot of time dirtside."

"Uh-huh. So maybe it's time you start livin' like a shipsider, 'stead of a ground-pounder."

"Shipsider..?"

"Uh-huh, yeah," Wash enthused over the comm. "There's a whole 'Verse-wide sub-culture. Read all about it in a book, it's an anthropology text, Nomads of the Black. I downloaded it when Zoe told me she'd grown up on a ship-"

"Wash, honey."

"Sorry, lambie-toes."

Mal managed, barely, to keep himself from gagging openly. Across the galley, he heard a muffled giggle from Kaylee.

"What I'm sayin', Cap'n," Zoe went on patiently, "is that me, my ma and pa, my aunts an' uncles, my cousins, hell, Mal, my grandparents and great-grandparents were the results of 'shipboard romances.'"

Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, Mal said carefully, "Zoe, I meant no offense 'gainst you or your kin. 'S just, like, things get tangled, chains of command, all that, when officers start... fraternizin' with the troops... crew."

"Mal," Wash broke in again, "this isn't about... fraternizing. About below-deck slap and tickle. This is about real commitment. About marriage. 'Cuz I asked her and she said 'yes'." Even over the comm, Mal could hear the sheer joy trembling in his pilot's voice. Aghast, he stared at Zoe.

She nodded solemnly. "We were tryin' to tell you, Cap'n. Before you... retreated strategically."

"Oh, Zoe, Wash!" Kaylee virtually sang her delight. "This is so shiny! Oh, Cap'n, ain't this shiniest thing ya ever heard!?"

No, it weren't shiny. It was wrong. Oh, this was so very, very wrong. Zoe? Zoe with that _fong luh_ man-child of a shiftless fly-boy? Married? No! Oh, God in Heaven, what if they did the whole gorram shipsider family thing? There'd be little Washes and Zoes runnin' 'bout on his decks. Well, little Zoes might be all right. But little Washes? No. Uh-uh. Creepifin', the very notion of it. Whole ship'd become infested with dinosaurs.

No. No, this wasn't going to happen.

"Kaylee," the captain ground out, voice low and harsh, "go do somethin' useful to the engine."

With a somewhat subdued, "Aye-aye, Cap'n," the young woman took herself quickly away.

"Wash," Zoe said crisply to the air.

"I'm gone. Comm off." They heard the click confirming that.

Voice still low, but very calm, controlled, Mal stared into his first mate's eyes and said, "Zoe. I'm ordering you. Don't marry him."

Gaze meeting his unflinchingly, she responded, "Sorry, sir. That's one order I ain't gonna follow." She crossed her arms over her chest, studying him. "Y' gonna throw us off _Serenity_?"

"...No." God, God, it was like being kicked in the crotch. He could hardly suck in a breath.

"All right, then." Zoe relaxed, letting her arms drop loose to her sides.

"I ain't gonna be there," he growled, needing to fight back in some way, even if it was petty. "When you do this thing." He knew he was sulking. Man's entitled to an occasional sulk. He couldn't believe his sensible Zoe was doing this stupid, stupid thing.

She looked at him, face set in stern lines. Her eyes, though, danced with wicked amusement. "Might not be there for the fancy bit, the sayin' of the words. But, Mal, 'less you toss us off the ship, you're gonna be there when it really matters. The day to day, through the years, actin' on the vows, over an' over again."

"Zoe-"

"Yep." She opened her eyes wide, transfixing him with a gaze deeper than the Black, brighter than any star. "Know you don't know what that really means, given how you grew up. But I know you know the abidin' trust one person can have for another. You know that." She held his eyes with hers, drawing him into that deep, wordless connection they shared.

After a long moment, he said softly, "It's like that, is it?"

She took a deep breath. "Not 'xactly. But near enough."

"Zoe." Then he repeated her name again, miserably, taking the risk of laying it all out. "Zoe. I truly, honestly, don't believe he can do this. That he can match you. That he's good enough for you."

"Know you're wrong," she told him firmly, unoffended. "But it ain't your lookout, even so."

He nodded, neck bending stiffly. This was the Zoe he needed. Clear eyed. With no illusions as to who he was, who she was. Who followed him anyway. With complete honesty, with complete conviction, despite intimate knowledge of his every flaw, his every weakness. He could only trust she had the same insight on Wash. Even now though, there was a part of him which simply could not bend.

"All right," he acceded grudgingly. "But I meant it. Won't be there. For the ceremony. 'Cuz of that 'speak now or forever hold your peace' bit." He'd be sure to say somethin' and hurt Wash's feelings, and then Zoe would have to kill him. 'Cuz that's what a wife did for a husband.

"But after. You'll be there." A slow smile spread across her face, one born of trust and deep, deep happiness. She knew exactly what he was going to say. God, how could joy for his best friend, his partner in life, hurt so much?

"Yeah. I'll be there. For the 'happily ever after' bit. For the 'until death do us all part' bit. Yeah. I'll be there."


End file.
